Photos: The birth of a supercomputer

Rochester is the home of the Blue Gene supercomputer, and is also
the birthplace of the AS400. The man who developed both, IBM chief
scientist Frank Soltis, believes that the weather in chilly Rochester
helps to develop better engineers and scientists. "There is not much
else to do here," he says.

IBM claims that it supplies more than half the supercomputing
capacity in the world, with 219 systems currently installed. The most
prominent is Blue Gene, a much more powerful version of Deep Blue, the
computer that beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov back in 1997.

What makes Blue Gene so unusual in supercomputing circles is that it
is wholly based on the Power PC architecture, instead of a proprietary
processor. That's the Power 4 processor, too, not the faster, later
Power 5.

Power 4 is most suitable, IBM says, because it is not as highly
clocked as other processors, so it produces less heat. The result is
that Power 4 chips can be packed very closely together which helps in
performance (cutting the distance travelled increases the speed of
operations) and also lowers cost, as there is no need for expensive
water-cooling.

Published: January 23, 2006 -- 10:55 GMT (02:55 PST)

Caption by: Colin Barker

This is the Blue Gene assembly area. The components are brought together here and assembled. The blue boxes to the left are a single unit under assembly. The racks will be assembled from left to right. The white boxes above the rack and then to the right are the air conditioning that will cool the system. A stack of boards is shown to the right of the picture.

Published: January 23, 2006 -- 10:55 GMT (02:55 PST)

Caption by: Colin Barker

The computer is made out of node boards which carry the processors. There are 32 processors on each board which, as the picture shows, can be densely packed together. There is less need for complex electronics around the processors as Blue Gene is the ultimate system designed to do only one job at a time — probably a very big job indeed, but only the one.

Published: January 23, 2006 -- 10:55 GMT (02:55 PST)

Caption by: Colin Barker

This is a single unit of the supercomputer, and contains 256 processors. The advantage of the Power 4 architecture becomes clear — not only are the processors close together but the boards are stacked closely and the units can be close together too. That all helps provide the high performance that is essential for supercomputing.

Published: January 23, 2006 -- 10:55 GMT (02:55 PST)

Caption by: Colin Barker

This picture shows several feet of space below the systems. This is essential to the performance of Blue Gene as it allows a lot of air to circulate below the systems as well as above. Any company buying a supercomputer needs to be well prepared for those physical demands, but if they can afford a supercomputer they should be able to afford to pay for a little digging.

Published: January 23, 2006 -- 10:55 GMT (02:55 PST)

Caption by: Colin Barker

A fully assembled, but naked, Blue Gene. When completed there is no need for the fans at the top of the system as it is air cooled by its own methods. The vents to the left are an important part of the process. One of the fastest Blue Genes is in an assembly like this at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, which is run by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Blue Gene no longer naked. The sleek exterior hides its rather mundane-looking workings but nothing can hide its performance. This is IBM's own Blue Gene Watson system which has produced performance of 91.29 teraflops and in November was named by the TOP500 Organisation as the second fastest supercomputer in the world.

But that list only covers supercomputers whose existence is publicised. According to an IBM source, about half the Blue Gene systems in the world are in "classified applications".

Supercomputers are usually one-offs, but IBM is getting close to mass production at its supercomputing facility in Rochester, Minnesota. ZDNet UK went to take a look...

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Rochester is the home of the Blue Gene supercomputer, and is also
the birthplace of the AS400. The man who developed both, IBM chief
scientist Frank Soltis, believes that the weather in chilly Rochester
helps to develop better engineers and scientists. "There is not much
else to do here," he says.

IBM claims that it supplies more than half the supercomputing
capacity in the world, with 219 systems currently installed. The most
prominent is Blue Gene, a much more powerful version of Deep Blue, the
computer that beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov back in 1997.

What makes Blue Gene so unusual in supercomputing circles is that it
is wholly based on the Power PC architecture, instead of a proprietary
processor. That's the Power 4 processor, too, not the faster, later
Power 5.

Power 4 is most suitable, IBM says, because it is not as highly
clocked as other processors, so it produces less heat. The result is
that Power 4 chips can be packed very closely together which helps in
performance (cutting the distance travelled increases the speed of
operations) and also lowers cost, as there is no need for expensive
water-cooling.